South Africa's Democratic Alliance mayoral candidate for Johannesburg, Helen Zille, speaks in front of a flooded road near the Nancefield Sewer Pump Station in Johannesburg, South Africa on September 17, 2026.
Decades before Helen Zille became the 75-year-old “gogo” (grandmother in Zulu) campaigning to run Johannesburg, she was a young white reporter challenging the apartheid government’s account of Steve Biko’s death.
Nearly five decades later, the former journalist, anti-apartheid activist and provincial premier is seeking another demanding assignment: Governing the South African city where she was born.
